Increase Class Engagement in Via Random Name Picker

As an instructor, I want to know that my students are engaged in the content. But, whether in an online zoom room or face-to-face, it’s impossible to tell if they are on task if I say “Take five minutes and go work on this yourself.” Some will, others won’t. The one’s who don’t often rely on the extraverts in the class to offer up what they’re working on, and there’s never enough time to see everyone’s examples, so they are let off the hook. One option, is to make them pair up and share what they’ve been doing, but even then, I’m not convinced that meaningful conversations are really going on as opposed to discussion of weekend plans. And that might be OK – we all need that kind of connection – but the problem comes when they have an actual assignment that requires the skills we just “practiced” and they do poorly on that, and I have to spend more time going back over the material.

Enter in a new tool I just found: https://miniwebtool.com/random-name-picker/

It’s not the prettiest thing -when you show it, it includes ads and all – but it is efficient and practical. You input the names of your students and then choose the # of names you want the randomizer to choose at once.

Click on pick a random name:

It then spins a pretty wheel that rotates through all the names, building the anticipation:

And then lists the winners like this:

The first time I did it, and called on the winners to share, there was the typical “Oh, I didn’t write anything down” reaction. But, as the group realized that it was truly random, and you might be called on multiple times, or not at all, and every time, it was random, it increased not only their engagement in the activity, but also after I had the 2 or 3 share, I had others wanting to share their examples, so left time for that. You can always remove a name from the list if they’ve been chosen a few times and you want to give others a chance, too. It was fun to hear their chatter as they watched the wheel spin, as well – brought an extra excitement to the room.

Happy to share this fun and practical tool. Hope it works for you!

New! Technology Tips and Tools for Your Career Practice

Many thanks to the Career Counselors Consortium Northeast, event organizers Laurie Stickles and Sabrina Woods, and all of today’s attendees! We enjoyed sharing our latest and favorite tools and hearing about yours. The discussion and questions throughout the session were much appreciated. We hope the materials are helpful and sparked a few ideas and curiosity to explore new possibilities.

The slides from today’s seminar are now available. What’s your most recent career development tip or tool?

Tech Twins offering a seminar this week!

We are excited to be back in action this week for the Career Counselors Consortium Northeast.

Still time to register at https://careercounselorsne.org/event-4721372.

Hope many of you are able to join us. We love sharing what we know and learning what you know!

The Wild Frontier – Career Advice via Social Media

We had the pleasure of presenting a session – in person! – at the 2022 NCDA Global Career Development Conference in Anaheim, CA, recently. Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the conversation.

There’s a lot of advice posted on a variety of social media and networking platforms from LinkedIn and Facebook to Instagram and TikTok to Quora and Reddit. And, unfortunately, it’s not all as accurate or helpful as it could be. What platforms are your students and clients using? Are they actively searching for career and job search advice there, and if so, what are they finding?

View the presentation deck below, from the conference session, for examples. We also provide ideas for integrating social media into the conversations you are having with those seeking advice from you, and tips for vetting advice found online.

Collaborative & Individual Learning Via Zoom

Problem: Students often limit the definition of a construct (e.g., vocational identity) by a measure (e.g., My Vocational Situation), and by doing so, have a very myopic view of the construct.

Goal: To have students learn how to expand upon a construct beyond what one instrument’s definition.

Challenge: Create an activity that requires active involvement from every student, engage higher order/critical thinking, AND, do it all in 10 minutes.

My solution: I chose a construct from an article that we are reviewing in class, and pasted the components of the operational definition of that construct on one side of the table. Then I told them to use whichever research-based database they preferred, and to find another article that offered a different definition, and to paste that into the table using the annotate function in Zoom. Below is a picture of the activity as they were working.

Next steps: When they were done, I asked them to point out differences between the article’s definition and these others, and we discussed being too narrow and too wide in our definitions. The next thing I had them do was work on defining their own construct on a shared document. I chose a shared document because some of them have similar topics/constructs, and I wanted to teach them that it’s OK to collaborate and help peers/colleagues problem solve. This meant that before class, I had to create the shared document, and paste their names, research questions and a table for them to work on in the document.

They had to choose one construct from a study they’ve been working on conceptualizing, and find at least 2 different definitions of the construct, and also list at least 2 different instruments they’ve seen in their searching of the literature that might measure the construct or a portion of the construct. Here’s a picture of 2 students’ work:

I gave them about 15 minutes to work on that. For their final activity, I had them then take 2 of the measure they had listed and conduct an instrument comparison. This took about 20-25 minutes. Here’s an example of one student’s work:

Reflection: Overall, I thought this process worked well. I demonstrated the technique using a shared article, challenging them to find alternative definitions. They then applied this skill to their own work. I shared my screen but told them they didn’t have to follow me. I worked with them, if someone was stuck, finding a definition or an instrument or details (like cost), and asked them to help each other. I did have some other modeling prepared, but didn’t think we’d have enough time to work through that and for them to work on their own stuff, and that the latter was likely more useful for them. I did achieve the goal of a ten minute activity with the annotation, but altogether these three activities took up an hour of class time, so there’s that to consider.

Question: How might you have approached this problem and goal?